R & G,

For winter fishing I vary between the tips and flies I described in the other thread. 15' type III and VI sink tips, and weighted and unweighted flies, rarely a floating line and weighted fly. I might on rare occasion use a 15' T-8 tip, but it's rare enough to ignore.

To your questions:
1. What do you use when 12 of T-14 is too much? That would be most of the time for me.
2. Yes.
3. I generally don't. I can cover most water by varying the angle of my cast to adjust for depth, and by adding a weighted fly or removing it if depth and or current velocity slows.
4. Maybe. I don't catch very many fish. I used to catch a lot more winter steelhead using an 8 1/2' single hand fiberglass fly rod with a WF8F/S sink tip of 15' of High Speed Hi-D and unweighted flies, mainly because I was fishing my home water, and there were more steelhead. I'm a believer that fishing over more fish contributes to hooking more fish.

Sg